Alright, I’ve been trudging through Atelier Iris 3 recently. The game bears a resemblance to a certain FFXI dungeon system. Edge and Iris work for the Guild, and accept quests that usually involve going into an Afterworld (dungeon) that has a time limit to how long you can be in there. When finished, the quests reward you with items or Quest Points which go toward your rank in the Guild. Get enough Quest Points and your rank rises, which usually starts a storyline mission. Blah blah, something something, collect the gems. Whatever.

When it comes to games, I can usually deal with weird and unnecessary restrictions like a time limit. That’s fine. When I first started the game, I could finish quests with ease. I had no problems doing what I needed to do within the time limit. Even now in the middle of the game it’s not hard as long as you focus on what you need to do. This is not the problem, though still an unnecessary nuisance.

The real problem is the amount of repetition. Progressing through the game, you unlock new dungeons that you can access, until it comes to a screeching halt at FIVE DUNGEONS. Mind you, each of these areas have many places you can’t access until later when you have the appropriate items, but doubling the size of a dungeon that didn’t have much depth to it in the first place isn’t exactly fun to travel in. From there, you’re forced to do quests in those same five areas between each story mission. As far as I know, once you unlock the fifth dungeon the only new one awaiting you is the final one, so that’s pretty lame in my opinion. It only gets worse when you have to do more quests because of the increasing Quest Point requirement to rank up.

For what it’s worth, the game does have some fun aspects which drew me in at the start. The battle system is pretty fun, with the Burst Mode and what not. It really drives your attention to making and upgrading weapons and armor through alchemy. Battle is further amplified by weaker version of Breath of Fire 2′s shaman fusion system called Blades. You acquire new Mana throughout the game which can fuse with either Edge or Nell and essentially turn them into a completely different person with different skill sets and stats. Interesting, right? Sadly even this has a few problems.

1) Every Mana you come across can only fuse with Edge OR Nell, not both.
2) You can’t fuse two Mana with one person a la BoF2 to create Demon Edge or Holy Angel Nell or whatever.
3) Iris cannot fuse with Mana AT ALL.

This only leads me to another problem. Why are there only three playable characters? Edge. Iris. Nell. Thats it. Atelier 1 and 2 had more than three playable characters, I don’t see the harm in putting two or three more in part 3. Did Gust just get lazy and not want to think up more Mana combinations?

Okay, I think this enough ranting to show just how bad this game is. Too much ranting now that I look at it on my front page. It went from being fun to play for a good long session, to fun in short bursts, then to “Holy crap I don’t feel like doing these damn quests.” I’ve gotta push on though, because I’ve already got a backlog of games building up and I don’t want it to get higher.